I think my next short story is going to be about vampires, but instead of sucking the lifeblood out of humans, they suck the lifeblood out of their own literary trope.
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[And, as a sequel, maybe something about zombies that eat just the creative part of the brain … not the whole brain, like the mirror neurons and the parts that make us do the same thing other people do …]
The other night I was at a P!nk concert. Through the buzz of the audience, guitars and synthesized strings began a slow, tender chord progression. There was something intriguingly familiar about the way the electric guitar was sliding around the chords as the bass covered the transitions. Then, P!nk leaned into the mike, parted her lips, and sadly crooned:
“It’s been a mystery, but still we try to see why something good can hurt so bad.”
It was a remake of Journey’s Who’s Crying Now, and the crowd immediately broke into a roar. I distinctly remember the entire song: the original piano reworked for a gently distorted guitar, the percussion rolling through the verses after the intro (unlike in the original where they drop in and out), P!nk’s gorgeously gravelly voice hitting every emotional punch of the lyrics and even the way it accidentally cut out during the bridge as she sang, “Your looo–oove … will never die.”
It was a complete multi-layered vision, and I’m able to remember it as I type this as vividly as if it had been a real, waking experience.
Oh, didn’t I mention? This was all a dream.
A never-ending torrent of advice pours down on the web about how to build a popular website, and aspiring writers are not spared this flood of counsel.
Afflicting far too much of this advice is a truly obnoxious blogging personality disorder: positive-thinking conformism. I’m talking about that sunny-faced variety of aggressive social pressure, typified by hypocritically griping about everyone else’s griping while pretending to give out positive, “expert” advice — advice that has no basis in objective reality.
Worst of all, this unrealistic griping often subtly attacks others who at least try to base their gripes in objective reality, stigmatizing them as trouble-makers and “know-it-alls.”
In all seriousness, what this online happy-thoughts dogma really boils down to is a broadcast form of relational aggression, a type of bullying based on shaming and threats of ostracism. Scan the promotional advice websites, and you’ll quickly bump into the primary tactic of this covert control-freakery, a list of “negative” blogging styles that freshmen bloggers had better avoid if they want to sit at the Cool Kids table.
But, you might object, isn’t it true that being gripey inhibits success online and in writing? Absolutely not, and we’ll get to the abundantly obvious evidence for this later.
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Lemon-lime, delicious soda flavor. Lemming-lyme, debilitating disease in Arctic countries.
vates: Latin: “prophet.” From earliest times, the poet has often been considered a seer or vates, divinely inspired, and his pronouncements have been accorded the status of prophecy. Vergil, for example, was believed to have predicted the future literally in his Fourth Ecologue, which celebrated the birth of a child who was to bring back the Age of Gold. For hundreds of years the poem was read as a pagan prophecy of the birth of Christ and Vergil held to be a vates.
– Literary Terms: A Dictionary
With my son Jack in town last week, I hit the theater to see three action movies in a row. Not my usual pattern of film selection but, hey, you can’t take a tween dude to see art-house niche flicks jammed with casually transgressive sex, dry social commentary, and/or confusing cinematography.
Plus, yeah … I do like action flicks, too. After all, you don’t hand in your Y chromosome when you get your first full-time job.
In the interest of this website’s basic premise, let me offer mini-critiques of these three films as story-telling. WARNING: Some of the commentary below could be considered spoiler-ish.
In part one of this series, I discussed the pros and cons of insisting on killer opening lines, how it serves the interests of agents and editors more than readers, yet how a strong first line can still lend an air of dignity and confidence to any story.
In part two, I presented my favorite first lines based on engaging ideas, in part three I dived into engaging characters, and in part four I looked at engaging settings.
Today I want to dig into my fourth and final list of Best First Lines, four of them, dedicated to openers that transcend the previous three categories by engaging the reader with more than one of them.
Last week, during my son Jack’s visit, we spent a lot of time in bookstores.
I grudgingly admit to scouring the wastelands of Borders for carrion (as I’ve done before) but we also visited a few bookstores at historic sites like Gettysburg and Harper’s Ferry. Below is my latest book score, and my newest reading list:
Some time ago, I dug into Patrick Kiger‘s list of literary one-hit wonders to see what they all had in common. What I found was that none of them followed what has become accepted as the “way things work” in the book biz.
One of the authors on the list, Ross Lockridge, dumped his masterpiece Raintree County
Of course, Lockridge pulled his stunt in the mid-1940s.
Recently in Los Angeles, a writer tried a similar tactic to get his screenplay read by a literary agent. Rebuffed multiple times, he decided to leave a briefcase containing the screenplay with the lit agent’s front desk.
The result? The police were called, and destroyed the briefcase with explosives.
O brave new world! That has such protocol in it! So long, Raintree County. Hello, vapid celebrity memoir!
In part one of this series, I discussed the pros and cons of insisting on killer opening lines, how it serves the interests of agents and editors more than readers, yet how a strong first line can still lend an air of dignity and confidence to any story. In part two, I presented my favorite first lines based on engaging ideas, and in part three, dived into engaging characters.
Today I want to dig into my third list of Best First Lines, six of them, dedicated to openers that present the reader with an engaging setting.
Now, you might assume that setting is distinct from the characters in it, but several of the lines in my list below show how characters — reduced to their most basic, introductory aspect — can strongly bring out the flavor of a setting.
